


Bad Decisions

by sunnyamazing



Category: Bodyguard (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Character POV, F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-26 05:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21368644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunnyamazing/pseuds/sunnyamazing
Summary: She’s always been the good one. The thinking one. The controlled one. There’s just something about him that makes her forget all of that.Inside Julia's head on the way back from Chequers.
Relationships: David Budd/Julia Montague
Comments: 4
Kudos: 54





	Bad Decisions

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this in the middle of the night on my phone; most of it I don't even remember writing. But I looked at it tonight and I felt that it needed to go up here. So, here is is. It could be a terrible mess ... But I felt it needed to be put out into the world. <strike>Before I go back to writing about baby Spot ;)</strike>

The car moves at speed through the trees. She stares out the window, watching as each tree passes quickly by her. 

She has tucked the file marked confidential down the side of her seat. Beside her left leg. The papers inside are now no longer in the perfect order in which she presented them. 

They’ve been peered at, stared at, pointed at. The words on them have been studied; read and then read again. They’ve been accused of being fake, have been accused of being lies. But they’re not. They are all true. He’d admitted it. 

He’d given in. He’d agreed to what she’s wanted. Her bill, RIPA-18 will pass and there will be changes made. She’s going to have a lot to do with all these changes. This is her time. This is her moment. This is what she has been waiting for, been striving for. 

She stops looking out the window and instead turns to the man who is driving the car. He hasn’t said anything to her, not since she got out of the car and told him to go to the Death Star if she wasn’t to return. 

He had still been there when the front door of Chequers had been opened for her. He’d leaned over the seat and pushed the door open and she had slid into the car next to him. Sitting next to him at all felt strange. She’s so used to being in the back of the car, staring at the back of his head. She isn’t used to him being right beside her. He’s in reaching distance, if she just moved her hand slightly, she could reach out and touch him. 

She hadn’t though and he had waited while she’d closed the door and clipped her seatbelt. He’d then started the car and he had begun to drive them both back toward London and the confines of the Blackwood Hotel. 

She stares at his face as his eyes focus firmly on the road in front of him. She studies his jaw, and notices the locked position of his chin. He’s concerned. She can tell. He doesn’t want to be doing this. To be out alone at night with the Home Secretary. If anyone found out, it would be the end of them both. 

She has to restrain a smirk; if anyone found out about anything the two of them have been doing it would end them both too. 

She can see the headlines now. How they’d paint her as reckless woman, who has destroyed a marriage. Even if they are separated and not smug married like she had accused him of being. 

They’d paint her as someone who made bad decisions. Who couldn’t be relied upon. But that has never been her before. 

She’s always been the one to make good decisions. The right decisions. She’s been the one to go to for good advice. Sane advice. 

She’s never really done anything wrong in her life. It’s always been planned, pre-decided and thought about to an nth degree. 

She’s always tried to do the right thing. Even if it was the hardest thing and she’d accepted it. Not only accepted it, but taken it in her stride. Used it to motivate her, to remind her of where she was going, of where she was headed. 

She accepted her parents sending her to boarding school, her mother sending her back so soon after the death of her father. 

She’d accepted it. Got on with it. Did things for the right reasons. Even marrying that idiot Roger had seemed like the right thing at the time. 

He had the right look, the right background, the right friends in the right places to prove useful. Of course, in the end she’d begun to hate him. But that could have been to do with his complete inability to keep his dick in his pants and out of colleagues and office staff. 

She’d contemplated sleeping with someone while they were married. She’d had offers. Many of them in fact. She never did though. She doesn’t know if it was out of some misguided loyalty or if she’d still wanted to be the one who always made the right decisions. 

The day her divorce was finalised her friends had wanted to take her for a huge party. She’d refused though. It didn’t seem like a good decision to be seen celebrating the end of a marriage. So, she’d stayed at home, raised a glass of wine to herself and her newly achieved freedom, read some paperwork and had gone to bed. 

She’d awoken the next day to her divorce being in the newspaper. But she hadn’t reacted. She’d simply turned her focus inward. Made her career. Made good decisions. That is until now. 

She blinks a few times to see if she can get his attention in his peripheral vision. But he doesn’t move to look at her. 

She wonders what it is that made her decide to make decisions she’s never made before. 

It was easy to blame the idea of trauma. Of being shot at being too much. The idea someone had wanted her dead that badly. So, she’d left a part of herself in the back of that car and then she had clung to the only other person there. He’d saved her life. So, she’d felt things for him. Conflicting emotions. But no. That wasn’t it.

When she’d called him from the hotel, hands cold and shaking, she knew that he would come. She knew he wouldn’t deny her the presence of his company. And when she’d basically fallen into his arms she’d had a strong feeling that he wouldn’t push her away. Those had been bad decisions. But not the first she’d made since his arrival into her life. 

Her call to the Minister of Education: based only on a private phone call she was never meant to hear, the fish and chips they should have never shared together, the cup of tea he’d made because kettles were too dangerous. Her request to have him back on her detail even after the Heath Bank attack. She’s never made decisions like that before. The nicest thing she’d ever done for PS Knowles was allow her to shop with her one late Friday afternoon when she’d needed a dress for a cocktail party. 

Ever since meeting him she’s made a series of bad decisions one after another. But worst of all is she doesn’t want to stop. She doesn’t regret making them. She usually thinks so hard about the consequences of her actions. Usually has such a detailed plan in place. But none of this is part of the plan. 

She’s always been the good one. The thinking one. The controlled one. There’s just something about him that makes her forget all of that. 

She clears her throat and finally he turns; for just a second his eyes meet hers across the car. “thank you, David.” She whispers. “I know you are confused.” 

He shakes his head, as his eyes return to the road, “worried,” he says back to her. “Julia ...” he begins but he doesn’t finish his sentence. She wonders if he doesn’t know what he wants to say, or if he just doesn’t know how to say it. 

She wonders how he feels about all of this, she wonders what he thinks about all of this. If he thinks he should have never answered her after hours phone call. 

When she’d called him she knew he’d come. She doesn’t know if it was because of a sense of misguided loyalty. But when she’d leant into him she knew that she’d crossed a line. She’d told him he could touch her. She’d fallen into his arms. She’d hugged him first. She’d kissed him. He’d responded. She doesn’t know when she started behaving like this. Doing things without thinking, doing things she’d been so critical of others doing. She’s always been the one that her friends came to for advice, because she always knew what to do. 

She’d been the listener of the group. Then she’d give her advice. And it had always been what the right thing to do was. She’d talked her friends off ledges, out of affairs and away from situations that she’d determined weren’t clever or right. She was the voice of reason. 

But now here she is, sleeping with her married PPO. She’s lost track of the times they’ve slept together now. All tangled limbs and boneless bodies; hiding together under white sheets. 

She’s worried that she’s falling. Falling hard and she can’t see a landing that doesn’t lead to her breaking. She doesn’t know where they go from here. 

She feels like a hypocrite. 

But worst of all, she doesn’t know if she cares.

The car slows now, as they reach the destination. Neither of them speaks, as he parks the car and then shuts off the engine. She takes a small look around, there is no-one around, their sojourn to Chequers has so far remained a secret. 

He doesn’t say anything to her, she doesn’t really expect him to. She can see his priority is getting her back into the hotel unscathed. He climbs from the car and holds her door open, she gathers her file and tucks them under her arm. 

They move quickly and efficiently through the service entrance, inside the lift and up to their floor. Their steps move in perfect synchronicity through the corridor, he opens her door, she disappears inside, he moves to his door, he too disappears inside. 

She hides her damning files, while he on the other side of the door paces back and forth for a few moments. 

She closes the space between herself and the adjoining door, her fingers reach out for the handle. The handle turns and the door opens. He is there, he is waiting for her.

He regards her carefully, she can feel his gaze upon her, she thinks he might want to talk, but she spends so much of her life talking, arguing and negotiating. She doesn’t want to do that now. 

Now she just wants him. She closes the space between the two of them and pulls him close. 

She doesn’t make bad decisions, well she hasn’t until now. 

Her mouth descends down on his, bad decisions, it seems she cannot stop making them. 

She feels like a hypocrite, but maybe she doesn’t care. 

She reaches for his hand, interlocking their fingers and pulling him towards her bed, they fall together into the soft bedding. 

Bad decisions, it seems she cannot stop them. 

But maybe, for the first time in her life, she just doesn’t want to.


End file.
